


every mother's son

by queen_edmund_pevensie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Season/Series 06, ahah yes i DID randomly get back into spn and start posting fic w little warning, and frankly! all the fic i post from now on is going to be NICHE and SELF SERVING, it was before but now it's gonna be GOOD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29789748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_edmund_pevensie/pseuds/queen_edmund_pevensie
Summary: You never know how to feel about these boys. The boys with your name. The boys with your daughter's face.
Kudos: 9





	every mother's son

How are you supposed to feel about these boys? These boys with your daughter’s face, who bear your names. 

Sam. He’s twenty-seven years old, he says, brushing his hair out of his eyes, and one month ago he jumped into hell. He let the Devil possess him and he wrangled back control of his body to throw himself and the devil into the cage where they belong. It was his mess, he says, matter-of-factly. He had to clean it up. 

He says he gets it from you. From the mother he never knew. He means beings Lucifer’s perfect vessel, you find out later, which is why almost all your nieces and nephews are dead. 

It always had to be me, Sam says. 

He’s calm about it. About coming back from the dead, about you coming back from the dead. 

He says: I have a brother, Dean. Everything he gets is from Dad. But when you see Dean, when you finally meet him, all you see him is your daughter, who died, 27 years ago. How are you supposed to feel about the man named after your wife, the oldest son of your only daughter, who is older than you ever knew your daughter to grow to be, who is older than she ever will be. 

***

When you first get back, Sam took you to see her grave. She was twenty-nine. Dean is thirty-one, but there is something in the set of his jaw and the shape of his lips that’s all Mary. Sam’s all Mary in the eyes, at least, you think he would be. There is something off about the way he looks at you, the way he looks at everyone except Dean. 

(Sam. He came back without a soul. There’s something off about the way he looks at Dean too, except that he looks at Dean the way you used to look at Deanna, like if you just listened to her long enough then you would figure out what was right from wrong, and that is exactly what is off about Sam. That he looks at Dean like he’s human. But you can’t know that. Not at first.) 

***

Sam says: My brother Dean got out. I think — it’s the right thing to do, to let him live a normal life? 

You want to say: Mary thought it would be the right thing to do too. Look at where we are now. You don’t say it. What will that mean to this man who you don’t know and who doesn’t know you. You have nothing in common, except Mary —who he doesn’t know and who died and didn’t come back — and a name. 

Instead you say: Your grandmother got to have both, for a while. You don’t know why you say it. 

Sam shakes his head, rolls up his sleeves. He says: Us Winchesters aren’t known to do things by halves. Dean’s all or nothing. 

***

You hunt with Sam. He shoots with precision you haven’t seen in a hunter ever. He is ruthless, and calculating. He’s the best hunter you’ve ever met. You say: Your daddy teach you all of this? 

Yes, Sam says. He gets quiet when he talks about John. Mary always said John was nice, John was normal. She’d have been pissed to know how her boys grew up. Sam zips his duffle bag shut and slings it over his shoulder. I hated him for it for a long time. I don’t anymore. Guess it was kinda inevitable, considering. 

***

Dean says: If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you. For getting in the way of Sam. 

You would be almost a hundred if you hadn’t died forty years ago, but you can almost see Dean as your grandson then, and you almost laugh. Your grandson, raised on the road by Mary’s nice, normal husband. All there is is Sam for him. You don’t blame him. You know what hunting does to a man. You did it for almost all your life. But maybe there could have been a version of these boys lives not steeped in blood, where you grudgingly learned to like John and you taught them gun safety and he taught them to fix up that car Dean drives around, and Mary gets to play housewife for all she’s worth. But you know as you knew in 1972 when she first brought John home to you, that one way or another, you all would end up dead and bloody, and any children she brought into the world would end up the same way. 

You didn’t think the same demon that kills you would kill her. It killed Deanna, it used your hands to kill Deanna, and it used you to kill John too. Your daughter sells her unborn son to bring John back and leaves you rotting on the side of the road, because, Sam tells you before either of you know what’s wrong with him, it was a hunter’s death, and all that demon wanted was for him to be born. Sorry, he adds, like it’s an afterthought. It kills John again, when he’s in his fifties. It killed all the Campbells who were left alive so they couldn’t help the boys after Mary died. 

You wish, for a moment, things could have been different, but you know what you’re asking for is a different kind of bad. A different kind of dead. 

***

When it comes right down to it, you don’t mind. You don’t mind the fire in Dean’s eyes, or Sam — who has his soul back and looks at you like a stranger and a missing piece. He just keeps staring at you, and you notice right away, behind the fog. You’re already gone, you’re already fading, by the time the boys catch up to you. 

It doesn’t matter. What could you say to them to make it alright? You’re nearly a hundred and everyone you’ve ever known is dead already. All that’s left of your family are the boys. Dean stands between you and Sam, and Sam huffs, annoyed, relieved. Mary’s boys, grown. Not Mary at all. They’re all John — all sincerity and bravado and loyalty to their family. You always thought Mary was too good for John. You think maybe you were right, but it doesn’t matter now. You’re almost forty years too late. 

You never know how to feel about these boys you never knew, who you should have never known. The part of you that’s still you holds still enough to let Sam shoot you. You died forty years ago, and Mary’s not coming back, no matter what you do.

**Author's Note:**

> oh anna, u might say, didn't u stop watching spn in 2016? listen...


End file.
